Ssd with three HD setup

[bosshogg55]

Hello,
I am building a new system primarily for photo editing with little or no gaming. I am putting the OS and a few programs on a 120 gig Vertex 3 and have a WD 1.5 gig black for backup and storage. My question is, will I benefit by adding two WD RE4 500 gig in raid O for programs and using the 1.5 exclusively for backup? If so, how would I go about setting this up? This is all on a new install with Win. 7 pro 64 bit.

 

[huron]

For me, I'd advise against a RAID0 setup...yes, this would increase the HDD performance, it would also mean that if you lost one of the members, the entire array would be lost and you wouldn't be able to use your OS.

I don't think you'd see much benefit from putting the programs in RAID0 - not a huge fan of RAID0 - if you lose one member of the array, everything is down until you can attempt to rebuild the array...you wouldn't be able to use your programs.

If it were me, I'd install the OS and programs on the SDD, then use the 1.5TB for data - the things you will be editing and finished products. I'd get another HDD and use it (or a NAS, external HDD, etc) and use it for backups (image of the system and data backups of your files).

 

[bosshogg55]

first of all, thanks for the response Huron,

I am pretty new to all the current hi tech components and all my experience was in building a few systems back in the days of the Pentium 4. Based on what I remember and what I've read, I don't understand what you mean by "if you lost one of the members, the entire array would be lost and you wouldn't be able to use your OS." If I put the operating system on the SSD and use the raid array for data, even if one of the drives dies won't my OS system be intact on the SSD and everything else I have be saved on the single backup drive? Also, that is why I would be using the RE4 version of the drives for RAID because they are made for that specific reason. Remember, all this info is only based on what I have read but I have researched info on these drives extensively and everything I have read has been very positive. In fact, I have not found any real negative information about these drives and they actually appear to be more reliable than the SSD that I will be putting my operating system on. This is just how I perceive it but I must admit I have been wrong many times in the past.

 

[huron]

Sorry...that was my confusion and misreading.

RAID edition drives are better, but they are not perfect - they just have a better meantime between failure.

My only concern with RAID 0 is that if you lose one of those drives in the RAID 0, that part of the array will not work...it depends on all the members of the RAID 0 to work, so if even one is missing, it won't work at all.

Were you planning on putting your data on these drives? You'd be able to get to the OS (SSD) if one fails, but wouldn't be able to get to the data if one were to fall, or even just fall out of the array.

RAID 0 is really used when performance is a must, but has the risk stated above. It functions by writing and reading info from all the disks in the array, but has not way to rebuild it if a member were to fall out of the array - that's why other RAID types exist - RAID 1 does a mirror...lower performing, but it creates a duplicate to the other drive, RAID 5...writes to disks, but also has parity information for a rebuild if one drive were to fall out (minimum drives - 3), etc

I am very paranoid, so I rarely trust a single drive with my data, so I have backups set up to at least one more location - an image of the OS, and backup of the data as well.

Sorry for my confusion earlier...hope this clears it up a bit.

 

[flashfir]

That sounds like a good idea since you have a 1TB internal backing up your two 500GB RAID-0 setup.

Not likely that your 2/3 of your hard drives will fail within the same week. Huron gives good advise but a little too cautious IMO. Everything sounds pretty slick, you'll enjoy the SSD!